Monday, June 17, 2013

Christopher
D. Wallis, Oxford graduate in Comparative Religion and assistant professor of
Sanskrit in Berkeley, treats us to a very well-written book: Tantra Illuminated. The Philosophy, History
and Practice of a Timeless Tradition (Anusara Press, The Woodlands TX,
2012). It is academically sound yet stands out among the dry academic works by
being very engaged with the theme of the book.

The writer
defines himself as a scholar-practitioner, initiated while a teenager. First
off, he goes through a lengthy exercise of defining his subject, drawing on
external and internal understandings of Tantra.
The word, literally “weaving-loom”, means “system”, “handbook to a system”, and
then simply “book”. It is a class of scriptures written in the second half of
the first millennium and the beginning of the second. Its topic is how to
achieve liberation and other things besides.

A necessary
explanation here is that Tantra has nothing to do with the Kāma Sūtra and very little with sexuality. (And to the extent it
has, it teaches intercourse with retention of semen, so what most men look for
in the sex act is the one thing to be avoided.) Of course, New Age channels and
the internet are full of disinformation on the matter, and for some more time
we will have to live with the Western conception of Tantra as related to sex.
Sometimes workshop on Tantra are announced by teachers unconnected with the
legitimate tradition: “If you feel like testing them, you can ask them what
Tantra [scripture] they are drawing on (…) and which Tantric mantra they use in
their daily sādhana [regular
spiritual practice].” (p.432) But at least this gives the writer the
opportunity to unchain his devils against the internet, an endless source of
false claims about Indian religions.

At the end
of it, he clarifies that he will limit himself to one specific tradition within
Tantra, one that he knows intimately by practice: Śaiva Tantra as (once) practised in Kaśmīr.

A priceless compendium

The book contains
a number of appendixes detailing the master-pupil lines of the different
branches of Shaivism and Tantra. The height of this tradition was in the 10th
century, with the Kashmiri polymaths Utpaladeva
and Abhināvagupta. A quarter of the
book (p.191-320) consists of a necessarily incomplete but already very detailed
history of Kashmiri Shaivism and its offshoots in South India, Indonesia and
Tibet.

To get a
vivid picture of this tradition and of Indian asceticism in general, these
biographical glimpses of its major figures are unsurpassed. Nine different
traditions within Śaiva Tantra are
described. Opposite poles are the orthodox or right-hand path, now still known
as Śaiva Siddhānta, and the
deliberately transgressive left-hand path of Kaula Tantra.Some of its
schools were imposing institutions, but “like [the Buddhist university of] Nālandā, they were destroyed in the
Muslim invasions”. (p.196) However, Shaivism’s loss of ascendancy was not only
due to Islamic destruction: there was a spontaneous shift to the devotional
Bhakti movement (which teaches surrender to the deity rather than autonomy
through techniques) and the rise of the Nāth
Yogis with their simplification of Shaivism known as Haṭha Yoga.

Another
quarter (p.321-420) is devoted to the practice of this path. At length the writer explains the
concepts and actual performance of initiation (dīkṣā) and transmission of energy (śaktipāta), and all the other practices, including
the devotional ritual before a likeness of the deity and the meditative
visualization (dhyāna) that is so
typical of Tantra. Ideally, one
pictures the deity in detail, with all the iconographical information depicted
nowadays on dog-posters, and then identifies completely with the chosen god. We
also learn that Abhināvagupta already
taught what we know as “affirmations” of “positive thinking” under the name of śuddha-vikalpa (“pure resolve”): if you
are dogged by a negative thought or self-image, carefully formulate its
opposite and then repeat it mentally as a mantra.

But first
the author gives us an enlightening summary of the philosophy of Śaiva Tantra (p.45-191). The teachings
are at once related to lived reality. Thus, the four states of consciousness
(waking, dreaming, sleeping and meditation) are not only explained, as they are
in many books, but their occasional combinations are elaborated on:
dreaming-in-waking, meditation-in-dreaming etc. Everything east of the Indus is
counted, so we get the 36 Tattva-s
(“substance”, “thatness”), the 12 goddesses or Kālī-s, the 4 levels of language, etc. But the overriding feature
of this worldview is the couple Śiva
and Śakti, and what they signify.

Theism

Like the
devotional tendency (Bhakti),
Kashmiri Shaivism is quite popular with Indophiles from a Christian background,
because its God-centredness feels so familiar. The fourth-highest of the 36 Tattva-s, “substances”, in the Kashmiri
Shaiva system is Īśvara, “the Lord”.
Wallis holds it equal to the monotheistic Deity, meaning Yahweh or Allah, but
also Kṛṣṇa or Avalokiteśvara, “the Lord who looks down (on the people below)”,
the Buddhist personification of compassion. “Īśvara is a generic, non-sectarian form of God”. (p.142) He also
equates idam aham, “this I am”, with
the Biblical Ehyeh asher ehyeh, “I am
who I am”.

“This I am” encapsulates the Upanishadic
worldview in which everyone is a drop in the ocean of Brahma, and as such also
related to one another. Thus, I am equal to the one in the sun: “Him am I”, So’ham. It has nothing to do with the
Biblical concept of one jealous God. By contrast, “I am what I am” is what Moses
imagines God answers to him when he asks for God’s name. The way the expression
was used in similar contexts, it really means: “I don’t need to answer you, I
can be anyone I want”. Many Christian theologians falsely translate it is “I am
that I am”, which can be understood philosophically as “my essence is the fact
that I exist”, at once an instant proof of God’s existence. They, and the Bible
context itself, link it with a folk-etymology of the name Yahweh as “the being
one”, “He Who is”, related to the verb form ehyeh.
We have to get away from these exegetical concoctions and submit to the
scientific approach of these texts. A century ago already, the Orientalist
Julius Wellhausen showed that Yahweh
comes from a Semitic root still preserved in Arabic and means “the blower”,
“the storm”.

According
to Wallis, the pre-Tantrik “Śaivas of
the Atimārga were complete
monotheists, some of the earliest monotheists in Indian ‘religion’.” (p.200)
Well, no. It is already questionable whether they really worshipped strictly
one God; but even if they did, it would not make them “monotheists”. The prefix
mono- does not mean “one”, it means
“alone”, and that is why Biblical scholars chose this term to describe the
worship of a “jealous God” who tolerates no one beside Himself. No Śaiva text is quoted as calling on its
readers to smash the idols of Viṣṇu.
Moreover, we learn: “Some of them believed that Śivahad many lower emanations, called the Rudras, divine beings that ruled the
various dimensions of reality.” (p.200) So, by Biblical standards, they were
still polytheists. Note that many fashion-conscious anglicized Hindus claim
that Hinduism is monotheistic, quoting the Ṛg-Vedic phrase: “The wise ones call
the True one by many names.” This too will fail to satisfy Biblical
monotheists, but it proves that Wallis only follows a widespread trend when he
claims monotheism for his cherished tradition.

Kashmiri
Shaivism is profoundly different from the Biblical religions, yet it has at any
rate the element “theism” in common with them. But even this is not certain: a
few scholars consider Kashmiri Shaivism as an atheistic system at heart. At any
rate, the substance “God” is only number 4, and is crowned by three higher
essences: Sadāśiva, “always/still Śiva”, Śakti, “energy, power”, and the highest, Śiva. Strictly, Śiva
means “the auspicious one”, an apotropeic euphemism with which to flatter the
terrible Vedic stormgod Rudra, “red
(in the face)”, “angry”. But “Śiva is
not the name of a god. Rather, the word is understood to signify the peaceful,
quiescent ground of all reality.” (p.144)

At most, Śiva is a deus otiosus, “less likely to attract worship in a spiritual system
that is focused primarily on the empowerment
of its adherents.” Therefore, “it is usually Śakti who is worshipped as the highest principle”. (p.145) The role
division is: “While Śakti is
extroversive, immanent, manifest, omniform and dynamic, Śiva is introversive, transcendent, unmanifest, formless and still.
Śiva is the absolute void of pure
Consciousness.” (p.144) Typically, Śiva
is depicted as masculine, Śakti as
feminine. In some schools she totally eclipses her consort and acts as the
first principle; this is called Shaktism.

God and Her Son

One thing
is insufferable about this book, and another one deserves to be noted because
it is not so innocent. Firstly, the politically desirable use of “she” when a
person of unspecified gender is meant, and where proper English would require
“he”, e.g. “each individual must decide for herself” (p.433), is already bad in
general. Regularly, even for the Supreme Being “She” is used. Thus, in the
middle of a discussion on Śiva, he
speaks of “Her power”, and how we can “realize Her as formless”. (p.187) By contrast, the goddess Kālī is properly
described as “She”. (p.189) Sometimes, the writer seems to realize the
awkwardness of this practice of his (hers?), so we suspect some self-irony in a
sentence like: “merely a temporary part He played, a dance She danced”. (p.162)

If
anything, tinkering with God’s gender should take the Germanic etymology into
account, which used the word God,
meaning “worthy of worship”, “the sacred” (corresponding to Sankrit huta), as a neuter noun. Christianity made it masculine, as a translation of Deus/Theos. The Bible, both in its
Hebrew and in its Greek parts, and every known religion that pays respect to
it, exclusively uses the word “God” as masculine.

The role
reversal with God as feminine is especially inept in the present context.
Tantra sets particular store by sexual symbolism and counts God/Śiva as male, his manifestation and
energy/Śakti as female. If I hadn’t read
that elsewhere, I could have learned it in this very book. In India, Śiva is always indicated as “He”,
eventhough he is the god who sometimes appears as one with his consort, Ardhanarīśvara, “the Lord who is half
woman”. Here, at any rate, we see him in another appearance: Śiva as the perfect male united with his
female counterpart. He gives a signal, she carries it out. It is like in
procreation, where the man performs ten minutes’ play while the woman goes
through all the motions of pregnancy, childbirth and suckling. Or if you
prefer, it is like in ballroom dancing, where the man indicates the moves and
directions while the woman does a lot more of the actual moving.

Overruling
a venerable Indian tradition thousands of years old, with a profound symbolic
structure, just to be on the safe side of a contemporary American fad, does not
show much respect. Serious practitioners of that same tradition will doubt the
writer’s assurance that he himself has hands-on experience of it. Rather, he is
one of those Westerners who stays in his comfort zone when tasting at elements
from an Indian tradition, which he adapts to his own (or his culture’s)
idiosyncrasies.

Hatred of Hinduism

Secondly,
many readers will overlook it, tucked away as it is in a half-sentence on p.112,
and otherwise not realize its broader ideological significance: “In mainstream
Hinduism – which incidentally has almost nothing to do with Śaiva Tantra except that it has
sometimes been influenced by the latter – destruction is considered the special
purview of Śiva when He is placed on
a par with Viṣṇu and Brahmā.”

Most
non-academic readers will be surprised to hear it, but the ruling convention
among India-watchers is to have and express a fierce hatred of Hinduism.
“South-Asian Studies” is one of the rare disciplines where the so-called
experts actively work for the destruction of their major object of study. So,
the one and only way of making the study of Śaiva
Tantra respectable, and to be seen practising it, is to distance it as far
as possible from “Hinduism”.

The
statement that “mainstream Hinduism has almost nothing to do with Śaiva Tantra” is ridiculously untrue.
The general Tantra and Yoga tradition is thoroughly Hindu, and most of Kashmiri
Shaivism’s concepts existed before in Hindu scripture and still exist in other Hindu
traditions. For instance, the central concept of the 36 Tattva-s (“elements”, “substances”) fully incorporates the older Sāṁkhya system of 25 Tattva-s without altering anything about
it. The remaining Tattva-s too are
familiar from other branches of Hinduism: rāgā
(non-specific desire), māyā (manifest
reality as the magic power of the deity), vidyā
(systematic knowledge), Īśvara
(Lord), Śakti, Śiva. Of māyā, he claims
that “in other tradition, māyā means
illusion” while in Tantra it means “”the Divine’s power to project itself into
manifestation” (p.140). In fact, “illusion” is the meaning specific to Śaṅkara’s Advaita Vedānta, while the general Vedic or “Hindu” meaning is “a
conjuror’s power to take any form”, and more precisely the alleged Tantric
meaning of “the Divine’s power to project itself into manifestation”.

From the
various definitions of Tantra which Wallis gives (p.33-34), the elements “theism”,
“kuṇḍalinī yoga”, “mantra-science”, “yantra-s/maṇḍala-s”, “the
gurū”, “bipolar symbology of
god/goddess”, “secret path”, “initiation”, “ritual, esp. evocation and worship
of deities”, “analogical thinking including microcosmic/macrocosmic
correlation”, “mudrā-s”, “linguistic
mysticism” and “spiritual psychology” will be familiar to practitioners of
other Hindu traditions than Śaiva Tantra.
Most of these components are already attested in the Veda Saṁhitā-s, the Upaniṣad-s
or the Mahābhārata. Similarly, the
four levels of understanding language and scripture, discussed at length on
p.163-174, are already part of the Vedic tradition. When Śaiva Tantra became a distinct school, it simply continued most concepts
and practices that it found. If Tantra must perforce be non-Hindu, fact remains
that it borrowed just about everything from Hinduism.

Disparaging Hinduism as non-existent

A very
common expression of this officially-sanctioned anti-Hindu attitude is the
denial that Hinduism even exists. This writer pretends to be very original when
he, predictably, takes this same position. For the benefit of the ignorant
reader he starts “clarifying the biggest misunderstanding: there is no such
thing as ‘Hinduism’”. (p.37)

Of course
“Hindu” is a foreign word not used by Hindus referring to themselves in the
classics. But it is not a “European” or “colonial” (meaning Portuguese or
British) term. This Persian geographical term, meaning “people living at or
beyond the Indus river”, was introduced by the Muslim invaders and already used
by the Muslim scholar Albiruni in the 11th century. It meant every
Indian Pagan, i.e. every Indian who was not a Jew, Christian or Muslim. That
same negative definition is used in the political definition by Vināyak Dāmodar Sāvarkar in his
influential book Hindutva (1924) and
in the Hindu Marriage Act (1955). Practitioners of Śaiva Tantra will therefore commonly be designated as “Hindus”,
whether they like it or not. And they like it enough when they solicit
donations from the Hindu public, though (like the Hare Kṛṣṇa-s) they claim to be non-Hindu before a Western academic
or Christian audience.

Moreover,
modern scholarship has acknowledged Hindu attempts at defining a common ground
since at least the 13th century. The several compendia of philosophies,
typically treating Buddhism on a par with Sāṁkhya
and other schools, served to see a common ground and aim in the different
schools of what is now called Hinduism.

It is not
necessary to espouse a common belief or ritual to share a common culture.
Wallis uses a Christian definition of “religion”, viz. a common truth claim
regarding the ultimate questions, and applies it to the Indian situation where
it has no relevance. This assumption of Christian categories is typical of
“Nehruvian secularism”, the state ideology in India and in the South-Asian
Studies departments of the West. It does profound injustice to the Indian
traditions (pantha) which share a
common respect for the sacred (dharma)
and a “live and let live” attitude to each other.

Conclusion

So, if the
writer is a man of honour, he will apologize for these two cases of abject
conformism. He will also correct them in a future edition. For, in spite of
these mistakes, it is still to be hoped that this pleasant book about a
momentous and little-known subject will go through many reprints.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Many people from very diverse
quarters say that all religions have a concept of “holy war”. In this, at
least, they are all equal. Thus, the recent cases of self-defence against
Muslim attacks by Buddhists in Thailand and Myanmar are taken to prove that
even the ostensibly non-violent Buddhists have their notion of “holy war”, now
on display. Similarly Hinduism has its own dharma
yuddha, literally (they say) “religious war”.

Some add that the one exception to
this rule, hence the most peaceful religion of all, is Islam. We have all heard
about jihad, thinking this is the
“holy war” par excellence, but now we are told that we have been mistaken all
along. Even Osama bin Laden didn’t know true Islam, he was wholly wrong about
the meaning of jihad. They assure us
that jihad is merely an inner
struggle against the evil in ourselves, not a war against unbelievers. At the
very most, it can be a struggle in self-defence when the unbelievers attack us.
Let us see what the truth of this can be.

Dharma Yuddha

The proverbial war in the Hindu
worldview is the great war of the Bharata clan, on which the mega-epic
Mahabharata elaborates. This epic philosophizes profusely on the principles of dharma yuddha even as it describes the
successive episodes of a real-life war. Yuddha
means “struggle, war”. Dharma, “sustenance,
that which sustains”, effectively means “maintaining the correct relation
between the part and the whole”, “playing your specific role in the whole that
you are part of”. It approximately means both “religion” in the sense of
“relating to the cosmos” and “ethics” in the sense of “correctly relating to
the beings around you”. Dharma yuddha
means “struggle in accordance with ethics/Dharma”, “chivalrous war”. But does
the epic describe a dharma yuddha at
all?

First off, there is no religious
conflict on the horizon. The Bharata war pits two branches of the same family
against each other. They practise the same religious tradition, just as they
have the same teachers, live in the same area, speak the same language and
share the same ethnicity. Clearly, dharma
yuddha does not mean “war against the unbelievers”. No command is given
anywhere to take up hostilities with a religious out-group, nor with any
linguistic or ethnic or any other group either. Coincidence has it that two
groups of cousins are in a position to compete for the same throne, and
attempts at finding a peaceful compromise fail.

But secondly, the actual war is only
partly a dharma yuddha. The rules for
a dharma yuddha are articulated, but
fall into disuse the longer the battle rages. The reader is treated to a
complete contemplation of the principles of dharma
yuddha, but the epic’s characters are shown as practising them less and
less. During the build-up to the war, the Pandava brothers with their friend
and adviser Krishna make several attempts to solve the conflict peacefully, and
are rebuked by their Kaurava cousins even when they express willingness to make
great concessions. They only resolve to make war once they have no other
option. And even when the war starts, Arjuna finds all kinds of reasons to
forfeit his claim and withdraw from the battle, until Krishna convinces him
that it has become necessary.

During the war, however, they let
the rules of “justice in war” relax gradually, commensurate with the other
party’s breaches of the code of chivalry. Thus, when the enemies’ leader
Duryodhana has fallen from his chariot, the rule that someone in an
incapacitated state should not be attacked, would normally apply. Yet, Krishna
orders to strike him while he is down. Duryodhana had been a party to the
forced disrobing of princess Draupadi, an un-ethical act, so Krishna is not
impressed when he now invokes the well-known rules of ethical warfare: “Where
was your Dharma then?” So, the other side’s breaches of Dharma are increasingly
used as a justification for breaking Dharma too.

The battle rages for eighteen days.
The change it has wrought, is best realized by Krishna’s brother Balarama, who
has missed the battle. He has gone on pilgrimage along the Saraswati river and
returns just at the end of the hostilities. He is amazed and indignant at the
size of the destruction and the decline into non-Dharmic behaviour. But that is
how war goes: at the start, as in 1914, you march off with a flower in your
gun, singing songs of victory, you even play football with the enemy soldiers
during breaks; but as soon as you have seen some of your comrades die, you get
angry and eager for revenge by any means, so war becomes more cruel the longer
it lasts.

The epic is by no means a children’s
story in black and white, or a hagiography for a saintly Krishna. The bad guys
always have a decent motive or a legitimate excuse for their conduct (for
instance, Duryodhana has welcomed the illegitimate son Karna after the latter
was spurned by the Pandavas), and the good guys have their own past to blame
for the misfortunes that befall them. They are all far from perfect, and the dharma yuddha is an ideal which they try
to uphold as long as the going is good, but which they betray more and more as
the battle gets grimmer.

The concept of Dharma Yuddha is akin to the
later European concept of Just War. The Just War theory is linked with names
like Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas and Hugo Grotius. It lays down that
war should only be started in self-defence, after attempts at a peaceful
solution, and with a real chance of victory. During the war, the means used
should be commensurate with the aim, non-combatants should be spared, and peace
overtures from the other side should be answered. The same principles are
already articulated briefly in the Dhanurveda and the Mahabharata.

Jihad

In Islam, the first blood that flows
is that of an unbeliever who laughs at the Muslims praying with their bottoms
up in the air: he is hit by the Muslims with an animal’s bone. There is no
trace of self-defence: an unbeliever exercises his freedom of expression and
the Muslims decide to become violent. Later, Mohammed would have a handful of
critics assassinated and another handful formally executed. This is the model
and justification for the murders or attempted murders of writers, cartoonists,
film-makers and other critics of Islam during the modern age.

When Mohammed and his followers
migrate to Medina, they are welcomed but soon realize that unlike the natives,
they have no source of income. So, they start attacking caravans. Mohammed is
credited with organising 82 raids (ghazwa,
hence also razzia) and with leading
26 of them in person. The passengers were held in captivity until their
families paid the ransom. Mohammed gave permission to his men to rape their
hostages. At first he instructed them to practise coitus interruptus (often cited in pro-Islamic arguments as proof of
how progressive Mohammed was, even condoning birth control!), later he decided
that it didn’t matter.

These raids set the pattern for
“holy war” against the unbelievers. They were called jihad fi sabil Allah, “exertion on the path of Allah”. Mohammed
used the money gained to buy weapons and horses to equip his growing army.
Nothing “internal” there, no character struggle against the evil tendencies
within oneself, only an external military endeavour. Given the repeated Muslim
initiative to strike first, it is also not required that the other side commits
aggression; self-defence is no requirement. All Mohammed’s subsequent struggles
against various categories of unbelievers are called jihad. So we have it on Mohammed’s own testimony that jihad means a military struggle against
the unbelievers.

When Islamic or pro-Islamic
apologists (such as David Cameron in May 2013, after a British soldier was
murdered by two Muslims in Woolwich) say that an act of violence against
unbelievers is a “betrayal of Islam”, they imply that an Islamic court would
punish the murderers. But in fact, before an Islamic judge, the culprits could
easily invoke the precedent behaviour of Mohammed himself. The words and acts
of the Prophet are the basis of Islamic law. All fatwa-s (juridical advice) ultimately answer the question in this
form: what has Mohammed done in a similar situation? The only reason for doubt
in some judges’ mind could be that in a particular case, an act of violence
would yield such negative publicity as to do Islam more harm than good. But the
mere fact that the Islamic cause was furthered by violence against the
unbelievers would be a sound emulation of the Prophet’s precedent. Whether it
was strategically wise to kill soldier Lee Rigby (and thus mobilize British
public opinion against Islam) is questionable, which is why the British Muslim Council
tried to limit the damage by falsely swearing that the act was un-Islamic; but
it was at any rate fully in accordance with Mohammed’s precedent and hence with
Islamic law (shari’a).

There are hundreds of farewell
letters, farewell video and suicide notes in which Islamic fighters and
terrorists explicitly say that they are going to pay the ultimate price for the
sake of Islam. For instance, Mohammed Atta of 9/11 fame and Mohammed Bouyeri,
who killed Theo van Gogh, said that Islam made them do it. Not “Islamism” or
“fundamentalism” but Islam. I take them seriously and believe them at their
word. By contrast, the “experts” overrule these men’s first-hand testimony and
assure us that it may have been any reason but not Islam.

Wherefrom then the claim that this jihad is merely the “little jihad”, while the real jihad or “great jihad” is an internal struggle? Firstly, note that all the above is
not really being denied by this claim. Jihad
is relabelled as“little jihad”, but is acknowledged nonetheless.
Preachers who have to motivate their flock to overcome the evil tendencies in
themselves like to picture this as a heroic enterprise, so they compare it to a
war. But of course, the metaphor of a figurative holy war is only possible
because the physical holy war exists.

The comparison happens to be
particularly popular in Sufism, a movement originating in the grey zone around
Islam. Mostly, Sufism drew from East-Persian Buddhism and from Turkic
Shamanism. The ecstatic trance pursued by the “whirling dervishes” is nothing
but the shamanic trance witnessed in e.g. Genghis Khan. The fana’ (annihilation) described by the
Sufi poets is an adaptation of the Buddhist nirvana.
This preservation of non-Islamic influences was aptly recognized by wary
Islamic theologians. Mansur al-Hallaj was beheaded for saying: Ana’l Haqq (“I am the True One”/Allah),
an adaptation of the Upanishadic saying Aham
Brahmasmi, “I am Brahma”. Only after Sufism was sufficiently assimilated
did orthodox Muslims judge it useful for propaganda purposes among the masses.

With success, for Sufi music, though
only superficially Islamic, is very popular in Pakistan and Bollywood. Sufi
phrases have hoodwinked many would-be “experts” into exclaiming that here is
the “real, peaceful Islam”. In reality, Sufis mostly became sweet-talking
Muslims who were just as hard-headed when it came to fighting the infidels. The
Sufi master Muinuddin Chishti, venerated even by silly Hindus, acted as a motivator
and spy in the conquest of North India by Mohammed Ghori. At any rate, if you
think that “peace” and “inner struggle” are the real Islam, take the test and
try to convince a shari’a court that war
against the unbelievers is un-Islamic.

Khalistani dharma yuddh

The Sikhs are a Hindu sect
particularly devoted to Vishnu in his incarnations as Rama and Krishna. Most of
the Sikh Gurus are named after them, e.g. Guru Govind Singh was named after
Krishna, the “cowherd” (govind). He
founded a military order, the Khalsa, in order to defend “Hindu dharma”. But in
the 19th century, the Sikhs, with their history of resistance
against the Moghul empire, saved many British colonizers during the Mutiny,
perceived as an attempt to restore the Moghul empire. Out of gratitude, the
British decided to upgrade Sikhism, not just by reserving many army jobs for
Sikhs, but by turning Sikhism into a separate religion.

This Sikh separatism caught on, and
by the 1920s Sikhism was led by a faction pushing for a distinct religious
identity. Since they could not start altering their holy Granth, a collection of hymns with Hindu themes, and standing proof
of Sikhism’s Hindu character, they altered or reinterpreted everything else.
Thus, for their holiest shrine, the Sanskrit name Hari Mandir (“Vishnu temple”) was replaced with the Urdu name Darbar Sahib (“revered court-session”).
Hindu icons such as the Vishnu statue in the Hari Mandir were removed, along with the Brahmins serving them. To
take distance from Hinduism, Islamic concepts were borrowed or Hindu terms were
reinterpreted in an Islamic sense. Thus, an Islamic fatwa became the Sikh hukumnama
(“command-letter”).

In this climate, it was inevitable
that among separatist Sikhs, dharma
yuddha (in its Panjabi pronunciation: dharam
yuddh) would be emptied of its Hindu content and take on the meaning of jihad: war against the unbelievers. In
India this means in effect: war against the Hindus. In the 1980s, this term was used for the wave
of terrorism against the Indian state and for the creation of a Sikh state
called Khalistan (“land of the pure”). This struggle was supported by the
global hub of terrorism, Pakistan (also “land of the pure”), eventhough there
is a historical hostility between the Sikh community and Pakistan, the
successor state of the Moghul empire. It also had the sympathy of many Sikhs in
the West as well as from poorly informed Westerners. Though the Khalistani
struggle in India died out in the early 1990s, there still are some centres of
Khalistani ideology in the West.

The Khalistanis’ sense of religion
is proverbially crude. This recrudescence resonates well with the cluelessness
about the fine points of religion among the “secularist” class, which holds the
reins of power in India. Every hazy prejudice by a Western tourist can also be
heard from the mouth of Indian journalists and cabinet ministers. Government-sanctioned
schoolbooks teach that all religions are basically the same. They are all
assumed to preach government-sanctioned ethics and, except for casteist Hinduism,
they are all presented as egalitarian. Since the existence of jihad cannot be entirely denied to any
Indian who follows the news, the next line of defence is to shield Islam from
criticism by alleging that all religions are the same. One way to do this is to
spread the false notion of “Hindu terrorism”, another is to blur the
terminology and equate Hindu “chivalrous war” with Islamic “holy war”. The use
of dharma yuddha as a synonym of jihad, “war against the unbelievers”, is
unhistorical and incorrect.

About Me

Koenraad Elst (°Leuven 1959) distinguished himself early on as eager to learn and to dissent. After a few hippie years he studied at the KU Leuven, obtaining MA degrees in Sinology, Indology and Philosophy. After a research stay at Benares Hindu University he did original fieldwork for a doctorate on Hindu nationalism, which he obtained magna cum laude in 1998.
As an independent researcher he earned laurels and ostracism with his findings on hot items like Islam, multiculturalism and the secular state, the roots of Indo-European, the Ayodhya temple/mosque dispute and Mahatma Gandhi's legacy. He also published on the interface of religion and politics, correlative cosmologies, the dark side of Buddhism, the reinvention of Hinduism, technical points of Indian and Chinese philosophies, various language policy issues, Maoism, the renewed relevance of Confucius in conservatism, the increasing Asian stamp on integrating world civilization, direct democracy, the defence of threatened freedoms, and the Belgian question. Regarding religion, he combines human sympathy with substantive skepticism.